Keeping in the background

I wasn't at all surprised to see the snow hit our shores this week.

For the last month I've had this week in my  diary as filming days in Newcastle, and when I go to Newcastle, it's cold. Bitterly, bitterly cold. About seven years ago I filmed an episode of the television series called "'55 Degrees North" in a field to the north of Newcastle. I think the plot required that I was involved in fighting gypsies who had encamped themselves on my land. What I do know is that it involved five consecutive days in subzero temperatures in a field.

Some three or four years ago I did the last series of "Wire In The Blood" playing the delightful Robson Green's boss. No snow this time, but bitterly cold icy winds blowing fearsomely through every location we shot in.

The only hope I had this week was that the script indicated that I was the somewhat imperious manager of a prestigious luxury hotel. Now that couldn't involve much contact with the outside world………… could it?  You'd be surprised. Last Sunday, entirely due to a casual remark made in an email, I received a new script.  By new script, I mean a script that held no dialogue even remotely similar to the one I had learnt over Christmas. In this new script the luxury hotel had stables. First alert.

The imagination of location managers on television series and films sometimes is quite beyond belief. It's always absolutely fascinating to have a picture of the location in your mind from the description in the script, and then to turn up at the location and find out what the reality is. In this fashion my office in a high security mental institution in "Wire In Blood" was to be found in an unused light industrial Park on Newcastle's outskirts. The cruise liner bringing everyone home in the famous Granada adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" was in fact the interior of the Adelphi hotel in Liverpool. And, probably most famously, Moscow in the television adaptation of "An Englishman Abroad" by Alan Bennett was, in fact, Dundee. I'm not sure what that says about  Dundee…… or Moscow, come to that.

So the luxurious Northumbria racecourse hotel was, in fact, a conference centre and stand at the Newcastle racecourse. Every single scene we filmed had access to the open air. We stepped onto a balcony. A gorgeous picture of a snow-covered racecourse. Freezing. In fact, there had been a race meeting scheduled for that very day which our director was hoping to use as background action. The race meeting had been cancelled due to the weather. We covered this by a hastily inserted line of dialogue into the beginning of a scene, and then we continued with all of us pretending we were not cold. 

 The second scene was the one outside in the stables, and on the morning when Tesco had been found guilty of somewhat dubious content in their burgers, I, for one, was not thrilled to find that two of their Finest range were to be background artists in the scene. Thoroughbred racehorses don't understand the meaning of silence. Unexpected noise means you have to do retakes. Retakes means you spend longer in the cold, and when you're wearing, as I'm sure most  luxury hotel managers do, a £59 machine washable Marks & Spencer's black suit with quick dry cotton shirt, and no thermals (Thank you Wardrobe) you soon start to curse the racehorses.

One could also begin to curse the eager assistant director who had begun to look at the plot. My four dialogue scenes were all about giving an alibi to a major suspect in this particular investigation. This meant, of course, that I would have been there at the time the alibi was created. In this case, that was a party, to be seen in flashback, involving 60 extras and to be shot that evening. The assistant director broke the news to me gently, that they had now decided it would be good if I was seen at the party. So having approached the day from the prospect of finishing at 3 o'clock after four scenes, it now looked as though I would not finish until much later in the day after a stint as a "Background artist".

The world of the "background artist" or "extra" as I must not call them, is a strange one. No acting involved, and indeed on many occasions, there is no acting available. They stand around for long periods of time purely to animate the background. They walk from A to B as directed by the third assistant director with no thought process involved and, quite often, no emotion visible. They do a brilliant job. Many of them do it as a hobby, a sideline to earn some extra cash. The rates vary from around £85 a day  upwards, but for this you have to get yourself to a location (no early-morning car waiting outside a hotel for you, I'm afraid)  and in many cases provide suitable costume.  Changing facilities are minimal on location, no one to run and get you a cup of tea, and in the food line at lunchtime, you're firmly asked to wait until the cast and crew have got their lunch before you approach the catering wagon.

Mercifully I didn't have to suffer any of the above. Apart from an overzealous catering woman questioning my "cast" status at lunch - she had  managed not to see me at breakfast, and as I approached the lamb biryani masala, she pointed out that supporting artists had to wait until the end. Mercifully I was saved by the director of photographer pointing out I was 'cast" , and so I didn't have to point out to her that I had had the lion's share of the morning's dialogue and that my bollocks were now blue.

After a further three-hour wait, I was placed in what was deemed to be a strategic position in the party scene for an establishing shot. Basically when filming the rule of thumb is -  if you can see the camera, the camera can see you. On this occasion the camera might as well have been in Reykjavik. There were at least 10 disco gyrating supporting artists between me and it,  and it would have taken close examination of the final scene on single frame advance to spot my presence. After this, I was asked to relax. I relaxed for two hours. When I say relax, what I really mean is I spent the time in a large chilled room with occasional cups of tea,  a discharged iPhone  (due to the fact that I thought I was finishing at 3 PM I had left my charger in the hotel room) and an attack of extreme boredom.  Outside the room supporting artists partied away in mimed enjoyment, until eventually I was hauled out to walk past the camera revealing the quality of the £59 tailoring cut from Marks & Spencer's, before being released at 8 PM-five hours later than expected.

It'll look fabulous in the final edit. You won't even notice the breath freezing on our mouths as we speak the dialogue, and you certainly won't notice the exceptionally well sartorially outfitted hotel manager at the party.